The Comics Code Trivia Quiz

Answer: The publication of "obscene" comics was made a federal crime.

"Funnies on Parade" was a giveaway, a promotional item for the firm Procter & Gamble, but its descendants were big business. In 1948, Americans bought between 80 and 100 million comic books a month! Marketed mainly to children and adolescents and produced outside the cultural mainstream, the comics were easy targets for people afraid of juvenile delinquency. Federal law was never made on the subject, but municipalities quickly became involved. Detroit came first, with a ban on 36 titles; Los Angeles County went furthest, banning the sale of any crime comic to a minor with a penalty including up to 6 months in jail. Students and community leaders -- including the Catholic bishop of Albany -- organized boycotts of merchants who sold comic books. And ritual comic-book bonfires, fed by volumes collected by the students, lit a smattering of schoolyards across the country and inspired scores of impassioned editorials both for and against.

Answer: He made all of these accusations.

Unlike most of the critics who had gone before him, Wertham did not focus his ire on the genre of crime comics; in fact, to him, nearly all comics promoted crime (immoral actions, if not illegal ones). Even seemingly innocent images could conceal salacious "pictures within pictures for children who know how to look." Batman was noted not for fighting crime, but for promoting vigilantism and -- apparently -- homosexuality. And Superman, despite his anti-fascist adventures in comics published during World War II, was unmasked as a representative of the "master race": Wertham wrote of "the big S on his uniform -- we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S."

But to Wertham, the superheroes' worst offense was their undermining of traditional authority: "How can [children] respect the hard-working mother, father or teacher who is so pedestrian, trying to teach common rules of conduct, wanting you to keep your feet on the ground and unable even figuratively speaking to fly through the air?" Wertham believed every fantasy dangerous, and his credentials made him a powerful enemy of the comics.

Answer: The cover was "in good taste."

Gaines had worked all night preparing his testimony, aided by the fact that his diet medication tended to keep him alert. He gave an eloquent defense of the notion that children could tell the difference between fact and fantasy, and that comic books were one of the few forms of entertainment within a child's budget.

But the effects of his medication wore off just as the hard questions were beginning. Having said that his own definition of good taste was the only limit to what he would publish, he was asked to defend the gruesome comic book cover on those grounds -- and found himself arguing that the difference between good and bad taste lay in the precise amount of blood shown in the picture. The press had a field day with the idea that THIS was a man entrusted with publishing comics for children.

Answer: An association of comic book publishers

After the U.S. Senate's hearings linking comic books to juvenile delinquency, a number of well-publicized comic book burnings, and a rash of local governments criminalizing the sale of (and sometimes the publication of) certain types of comic books, comic book publishers were running scared.

In order to head off even more bad publicity and government interference, they organized into the Comics Magazine Association of America and founded the CCA to censor themselves before anyone else could. They had tried a nearly identical gambit before, in 1948, but the nascent code had died due to a lack of funding, manpower and general seriousness; this time, the publishers gave the CCA a $100,000 annual budget and hired strict enforcers to implement the rules.

Answer: Printers, distributors and newsstand vendors refused to handle comics without the seal.

The backlash against comic books in the 1940s and 1950s was intense enough to frighten not only the production side of the comic book industry, but also its distribution network and retail vendors. It isn't hard to see why: admitting that one worked in the comic-book industry often earned glares and warnings not to be so free about admitting it! Even normally staid Supreme Court justices got in on the action.

In the 1948 majority ruling in the case Winters v. New York (which dealt with the sale of true-crime tabloids, a medium similar to crime comics), Justice Stanley F. Reed -- while overturning the ban as being too vague -- was sure to point out that, in the Court's view, lawmakers had a "duty of eliminating evils to which, in their judgment, such publications give rise." The Comics Code was seen as the only thing standing between retailers of comic books and the law's outstretched arm, and the CCA zealously enforced the "voluntary" code.

Answer: "Romance between the races shall not be depicted."

There was no prohibition on interracial romance in the Comics Code (although the movies' Hays Code did have such a rule). This code was not a racist document -- in fact, admirably for its era, it specified that "ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible." (There were, however, charges that it was initially implemented in a racist way: publisher Bill Gaines said in interviews that the Comics Code Association tried to bar EC Comics from depicting an African-American astronaut in a science-fiction story.) It did, however, impose draconian restrictions on comic-book writers.

The American civil rights struggle, for example, could not have been factually depicted in a strictly Code-compliant comic book: images of police brutality would certainly have created "disrespect for established authority," and it took far too long for good to triumph.

The Code drove out of business not only the lurid and sensational volumes that had inspired the anti-comic backlash, but also works of satire and social commentary.

Answer: Mad

The code was not just about overall plotlines: dialogue was censored and female bodies were covered up (oddly, there were no such restrictions on the male form). Artists were even asked to make their characters more attractive! EC's comic books ran mainly to crime and horror stories, two lines that became untenable under the new rules.

In fact, for many of these comics the title art alone was enough to violate the Code! Comics without the seal could not be sold in large enough numbers to turn a profit; meanwhile, EC's Code comics turned out not to appeal to readers.

In July 1955, publisher Bill Gaines threw in the towel. "Mad", which had run in comic-book form since August 1952, was the only publication he was able to save, by making it a magazine and thus freeing it from restrictions on comic books.

At the time of this writing, it was still going strong more than five decades later.

Answer: Spider-Man

HEW, a federal agency whose head reported directly to the President, had decided that a Spider-Man story would be an excellent way of showing kids the unglamorous dangers of drug use, and Lee -- the editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics -- agreed. The story featured Harry Osborn, son of the Green Goblin and friend of Spider-Man, struggling with the effects of LSD abuse. But the CCA never saw past the drugs; the context of their use, they told Lee, was irrelevant.

Secure in his position at Marvel, and with the government to back him, Lee simply ran the three-issue ("Amazing Spider-Man" #96-98) storyline without the seal of CCA approval, returning to the Code when he moved on to other plots. The comics sold well. The Comics Code's stranglehold on mainstream comics was beginning to loosen.

Answer: Zuvembies

"Vampires, ghouls and werewolves" were permitted under the code because they had centuries of Western folklore to back them up, but the walking dead -- a concept that stems from the religious traditions of western Africa -- were strictly forbidden. By the 1973 launch of Brother Voodoo in "Strange Tales" #169, however, comic-book writers had worked out that, while the CCA strongly enforced the letter of the code, they were much less interested in pursuing violations of its spirit. So they coined the word "zuvembie" for the mindless followers of supervillain Baron Samedi (the text was ambiguous as to whether these minions were technically deceased), and continued to use the word anytime someone rose from the dead in a CCA-approved comic book. Fifteen years before, the CCA had been the terror of the industry, eventually driving more than eight hundred people out of the comic-book business; now, it was almost casually manipulated.

Answer: The new head of the CCA made racist and sexist comments about comic books.

As the comic-book medium matured, publishers realized that their readers weren't just kids: there was a large market for more sophisticated fare dealing with more serious themes. Alan Moore's "Watchmen" series, published by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987, was one of the first publications to prove this concept (it was also the first graphic novel to win a Hugo award for science fiction). The Comics Code, designed for the protection of children, was too restrictive to govern works meant for grown-ups, especially as society's views on moral entertainment loosened. New comic-book specialty stores, removed from newsstand pressures, provided an excellent outlet for the sale of non-Code comics: no longer were boxes of them returned to the publishers still wrapped in plastic. More than fifty years after the Comics Code was imposed, it was no longer an effective force -- but, having kept the comics industry alive through difficult times, it left comic books a more accepted medium with more freedom to innovate.

Thank you for joining me on this tour of a fascinating facet of comic-book history! I hope you've enjoyed the quiz.